North's first win may be costly

North Melbourne finally recorded its first win of the season, but the match came at a potential cost with key forward Drew Petrie reported for a bump on Brisbane's Rohan Bewick ahead of the critical clash with Hawthorn on Sunday.

Petrie was leading out for the ball and cannoned heavily into the back of Bewick, who had dropped in front of him to mark. He was reported by the match day umpire but the contact appeared unavoidable with Petrie leading to the ball. It would not surprise if it was to be thrown out by the Match Review Panel on Monday.

Brisbane's Jack Redden was also reported for a crude high bump on Ben Cunnington when the North player was bending down gathering the ball.

Scott praised his side for finally playing four quarters in accounting for the hapless Lions by 63 points at Etihad Stadium, but admitted they now faced a daunting prospect against Hawthorn at the MCG.

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"The review from the Sydney game highlighted a broad range of fundamental errors, which we had still a few tonight but a lot less," Scott said.

"I did make mention of the fact that people probably think we have had issues with third quarters. I don't see it that way personally, but the reality is in retrospect we have had poor third quarters in the opening month. That has been the result of some pretty fundamental mistakes.

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"We just made sure that our organisation was really good. I was never in any doubt about our attack at the footy or abiliy on the contest, it was more about staying organised and not getting confused like we did last week in the third quarter.

"We had to stay in the moment and stay in the present and not get worried by those things. It sounds boring, but we had to fix up some fundamental errors of the game which were really killing us, but 80 or 90 per cent was really good and today 95 per cent was pretty good. What gives us confidence is our best is up there and can compete for periods of games with top four sides.

"I think we have played arguably the three premiership favourites in the first month and we have the fourth (Hawthorn) coming up next week."

Scott praised the third-quarter effort of Jack Ziebell and the defensive work all day of full-back Scott Thompson who beat veteran champion Jonathan Brown.

"Jack, by his own standards, has been a little bit disappointing in the first three weeks ... I thought Jack stepped his game up this week and stamped his authority on the game and I thought he was impressive," Scott said.

Ziebell said all players had adopted an attitude at the half-time break that they were tired of flagging in third quarters and wanted to remain focused on lifting their performance.

"I think each player had had enough and said, ‘I want to play my role the whole time' and that is all we want. Even in that last quarter, blokes could have quite easily put the cue in the rack, but we showed we were not content. We made a focus to play for the four quarters," Ziebell said.

"I did have a mindset to really try and have an impact in that third quarter and especially early and try not to allow Brisbane to get a run-on. And it was not just me but the whole team and I think we did a really good job."